Monday, August 27, 2012

I was so impressed by this article (Spanish original) by Rudolfo Beuno in Ecuador's El Telegrafo newspaper that I decided to provide an English translation (Google Translate doesn't do it justice) plus a few Wikipedia links. NB: For anyone not familiar with the term "yellow press" it refers to the typical tabloid lies and sensationalism.

Regarding
Assange, the so-called free press argues that he is sought not for
political reasons but for rape; that on the subject of asylum, the UK has a
more than straight position, and that Ecuador has a double standard because, at
the same it defends Assange, it will extradite Alexander Barankov, a
Belarusian dissident whose life would be in danger in their homeland. These three lies collapse under their own weight. Let us see why.

Assange would not be the first to be accused of a crime in order to punish him for an act that deserves reward. In the same way, Sacco and Vanzetti were accused not of being anarchists but robbers, so
they were sentenced to the electric chair, and Captain Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced by a French military court to life imprisonment on Devil's
Island, under the false accusation of having delivered secret documents to
the Germans.

Émile Zola wrote the monumental "J'accuse" in his defense. And we could list countless similar cases. The persecution of Assange, as anyone with their eyes open can see, has inspired a tawdry mess.

Regarding the right of asylum, the UK has given refuge to a number of
criminals, tried and convicted by courts in Russia, such as Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch mafia member of that country, who was guilty of
introducing the "robber capitalism" that almost starved the people during the
Yeltsin years, when he was Secretary of the Russian Security Council and made his fabulous fortune blatantly stealing the wealth of the whole
society.

Not only that, but they even gave him a British passport under the name Platon Elenin.
The effect of the actions of this villain, and others, was so disastrous
that in the course of two decades the population of Russia decreased by
ten million and their average life span decreased by about fifteen years.

Finally, we should ask those who fill their mouths with noble words to compare the cases of Barankov and Assange, why has this apparent human rights
fighter, who is supposedly dedicated to exposing the corruption of the Lukashenko
government, cataloged throughout Europe as the continent's last
dictator, not requested political asylum in England, where he would
never be extradited? Why has he fled to Ecuador, where his life would be in danger? Could it be for some reason that these commentators do not know, or do not want to know? Maybe he has a tail of straw. But whatever it is, if this newspaper published the truth, it would not be yellow.

Show us one case in English law where a man has been successfully convicted of rape in the same circumstances. Just one... Go on, it should be easy.

NB: this would include, in the supposedly more serious case, consensual sex followed by penetration while asleep, followed by more consensual sex, followed by happy smiles and hugs the next day.

Two: “Assange is more likely to be extradited to USA from Sweden than the United Kingdom”

It is certainly true that David Cameron's UK government would be just as happy as Sweden to extradite Assange - if nobody was looking, and if they thought that they could get away with such a crime as easily as Carl Bildt's gang in Stockholm. But extraditing Assange from the UK would have never-ending political and legal consequences (just look at how Blair's illegal invasion of Iraq still reeks like an albatross nailed to the door of 10 Downing Street).

More importantly, however, Sweden has a special deal with the USA called "temporary rendition". David Allen Green (let's call him DAG for short) doesn't even mention it, even though it's widely discussed at sites like Justice4Assange.com (has he even visited those sites?). This sordid little "temporary rendition" deal legally binds Sweden to extradite anyone the US requests.

And let's not forget how Sweden rendered two asylum-seeking Egyptians for the CIA, who then handed them over to Mubarak's torture squads.And let's note that there is minimal public outrage about this in Sweden, because hardly anybody is speaking out against their US overlords in the Swedish media or in parliament.

Furthermore, there is a narrative at play here. Until and unless the USA reveals their secret Grand Jury bullshit "evidence", there is absolutely no reason for the UK to extradite Assange to the USA. And if we assume (as some people do) that the sex allegations are a hurriedly concocted means to smear Assange's reputation and get him behind bars ASAP, it's important that the Swedish "rape" narrative is sustained to a logical conclusion. Otherwise the whole thing starts to look even more farcical. Just imagine if the USA revealed it's sealed indictment NOW - it would immediately justify everything Assange and his "paranoid" supporters have been saying.

Three: “Sweden should guarantee that there be no extradition to USA”

DAG regurgitates the meme that is is "not legally possible" for the Swedish government to give any guarantee about a future extradition. This is nonsense. There are ways and means of achieving such guarantees, assuming they are desired. For example, the Sweden government could seek a guarantee from Washington that they will not seek extradition while Assange remains in Sweden.

The pretence that Sweden and the UK cannot extradite to the USA is also a farce. The USA can seek extradition based on one piece of bullshit "evidence", then introduce more bullshit "evidence" with a stronger penalty once Assange is on US soil (or in Gitmo, where centuries of international law and US domestic laws clearly mean Jack Shit).

Four: “The Swedes should interview Assange in London”

This is where DAG excels himself, claiming Assange "cannot actually be charged until he is arrested". DAG then goes into lengthy and impressive detail about Swedish law. But wait a minute, mate - there is nothing in Swedish law that says they cannot question a European Arrest Warrant suspect abroad. In fact they have done it before (a fact they strangely denied for many months) in cases far more serious than Assange's.

Given the current diplomatic impasse, it would surely be in everybody's best interests if Sweden went into the Ecuadorian Embassy and asked Assange whatever else they still need to know (remember, they already questioned him in Stockholm before the case was closed - then reopened). The Swedes could then present their evidence to the world - or at least to the Ecuadorean government. If they have a valid case, not just a he-said-she-said media brouhaha, then I'm sure growing public support for Assange will disappear before you can say "He only deserves power who every day justifies it" (Dag Hammarskjold). Assange and Ecuador (if they still supported him) would be isolated, if not disgraced, and the situation would be far easier to resolve.

It is important to note that there is nothing stopping the Swedes questioning Assange right now, and yet they refuse to even try and publicly explain why they will not question him in London. It cannot be for the alleged victims' sake - their cause would have been best served, if anybody actually cares about them, by resolving this case two years ago.

Anyone who believes the garbage about Ecuador persecuting journalists needs to take a good,long look at President Correa's continuing battles with a corporate-controlled media market. They should also go and read a few Ecuadorian newspapers, where criticism of the government is still easy to find.

It is wildly ironic that newspapers like The Guardian, which loudly condemns Rupert Murdoch's influence on British politics and society, should fail to applaud Ecuador's new constitution, which restricts private media ownership to 33% of the market. And it is shameful to see supposedly humanitarian groups, many of whom rely on US funding, joining the chorus condemning Correa's efforts to provide a free and fair press.

DAG also cites the case of Alexander Barankov, who is to currently facing extradition from Ecuador to Belarus. This troubling case is also being widely cited as a reason to condemn Correa. Personally, without having seen any evidence at all, and while a judgement on Barankov's extradition remains pending, I will hold off judgement. Would that others could do the same more often.

Monday, August 6, 2012

I am reposting the article below from the American Buddha website, partly because it's impossible to read there (yellow text on red background wtf?) but also because it's an excellent summary of US meddling in Australian politics over the past 50 years or more.

If you are puzzled by the Australian government's demonisation of WikiLeaks and total abandonment of Julian Assange, perhaps this will help explain it. If you notice any inaccurate information or outdated facts, please advise - it looks pretty solid to me.

THE CIA IN AUSTRALIA: AMERICA'S FOREIGN WATERGATE

by wakeupmag.co.uk

"The CIA's aim in Australia was to get rid of a government they did notlike and that was not co-operative… it's a Chile, butin a much more sophisticated and subtle form."- VICTOR MARCHETTI, ex-CIA officer, 1980

"There is profoundly increasing evidence that foreign espionage and intelligence activities are being practised in Australia on a wide scale… I believe the evidence is so grave and so alarming in its implications that it demands the fullest explanation. The deception over the CIA and the activities of foreign installations on our soil… are an onslaught on Australia's sovereignty."- GOUGH WHITLAM to the Australian Parliament, 1977

On December 2nd 1972, Australia's first Labor Government for twenty-three years was elected. The new Prime Minister, Edward Gough Whitlam, quickly set about a series of historic legislations: wages, pensions and unemployment benefits were increased; equal pay for women was introduced; a free national health service was established; spending on education was doubled; university and college fees were abolished; and legal aid became a universal right.

The Federal Government assumed responsibility for Aboriginal health, education and welfare, and the first land rights legislation for Aborigines was drafted. Cultural initiatives for women, Aborigines and immigrants were set up. Imperial honours such as knighthoods and MBEs were scrapped. The "Commonwealth Government" was renamed the Australian Government and an Australian anthem replaced "God Save the Queen."

Conscription was ended. Australian troops were withdrawn from the Vietnam War and men imprisoned for draft evasion were released. Australian ministers publicly condemned the American conduct of the Vietnam War. The U.S. bombing of Hanoi during Christmas 1972 was denounced as the work of "maniacs" and "mass murderers". Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Jim Cairns, called for public rallies to condemn the bombing and for boycotts on American goods. In response, Australian dockers refused to unload American ships. Whitlam himself warned the Nixon administration that he might draw Indonesia and Japan into protests against the bombing.

The Australian Government also pressed for support for the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace, which was opposed by the US, and spoke up in the United Nations for Palestinian rights. The French were condemned for testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, and refugees fleeing the CIA-backed coup in Chile were welcomed into Australia (an irony in the light of Washington's retaliation against Whitlam).

"We were told that the Australians might as well beregarded as North Vietnamese collaborators."- FRANK SNEPP, CIA officer stationed in Saigon atthe time of the Agency's covert activities againstthe Whitlam government.

The CIA's alarm over the Australian Government rose to a fury when, in the early hours of March 16th 1973, the Attorney General, Lionel Murphy, led a raid on the Melbourne offices of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Murphy and Whitlam were concerned about ASIO's involvement with local fascist Croatian groups that had carried out terrorist acts in Australia and against Yugoslav diplomats abroad.

Set up under the auspices of the UKUSA Treaty in 1949, ASIO had distinguished itself by not uncovering a single spy or traitor (this is still the case), yet it had become almost as powerful in Australia as the CIA itself. ASIO had a secret pact of loyalty to the CIA and helped to set up and maintain secret police organisations that kept files on all Australian Labor Party members, prominent politicians, government officials, union leaders, members of the Council of Civil Liberties and anyone considered the slightest left-of centre. Even prayer meetings for peace were watched and recorded.

According to a top-secret report to a Royal Commission into Australia's secret services led by Mr Justice Hope, for decades members of ASIO handed over to the CIA slanderous information against Australian politicians and senior officials who they regarded unfavourably. This material ranged from accusations of subversive tendencies to concern about their personal lives, and allowed the CIA to work against these people in ways that ranged from blackmail to efforts to block their careers.

ASIO is run as an internal organisation in Australia. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS, operates abroad and is less well known. Code-named MO9, its existence was only acknowledged after the Labor Government came to power in 1972. ASIS played an important role in the CIA's covert activities against foreign governments in Southeast Asia. For example, after Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in 1965, the CIA used ASIS to secretly carry out its work in the country for the next four years, despite official Australian policy being one of strict neutrality. After Sihanouk was overthrown in a CIA-inspired coup, American forces invaded Cambodia and the US carpet-bombing of the country - a bombing so intense that during one six-month period in 1973, American B52s dropped the equivalent (in tons of bombs) of five Hiroshimas on the civilian population - served as a catalyst for the rise to power of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge).

Whitlam also discovered that ASIS agents were working for the CIA in Chile, de-stabilising the government of Salvador Allende, who was supported by the Australian Labor Government. Whitlam promptly ordered the ASIS officers home. However, some remained in Chile under Australian Embassy cover and without Whitlam's knowledge; Allende was subsequently murdered during the CIA-orchestrated military coup led by the dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

The CIA's concern over the activities of the Whitlam government was due to the fact that Australia played a pivotal role in the United States' desire for covert influence over Indo-China. Some of the most strategically important and top-secret American bases outside the United States are located in Australia. These include the U.S. Naval Communication Station, North West Cape, on the northern coast of Western Australia, which transmits battle orders for the nuclear missile-carrying Polaris submarines. The most secretive Australian intelligence organisation is the Melbourne-based Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) which is modelled on the American National Security Agency, NSA. The DSD spies for the U.S. in the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. There is also the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO), established in 1970 under the supervision of the CIA's analyst division, and the Office of National Assessments (ONA), whose job is to co-ordinate and analyse Australia's extensive spying networks in the region.

Most important of all is Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, officially described as an American- Australian "Joint Defence Space Research Facility", but in actuality it is an entirely American spy-satellite base, run by the CIA and the NSA. Pine Gap can pick up communications from almost anywhere in the world; its primary function is the collection of data from CIA sources and transmitters, and the preparation for nuclear warfare. So secretive were Pine Gap and the other major U.S. base at Nurrungar in South Australia that no details of their plans were revealed to successive Australian Prime Ministers and their cabinets.

Leaked Australian Defence Department documents disclosed that in 1972, high-frequency transmitters at North West Cape had helped the United States to mine Haiphong and other North Vietnamese harbours; and that satellites controlled from Pine Gap and Nurrungar were being used to pinpoint targets for the American bombing of Cambodia. These actions were taken entirely without the consent or knowledge of the Australian government.

William Corson, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer, also revealed that the CIA ran between ten and fifteen "black airfields" at their secret Australian bases during the Vietnam War, flying "hot" CIA agents from Vietnam for debriefing. In 1975, as the North Vietnamese captured control of South Vietnam, massive supplies of drugs that had been stashed by the CIA in Vietnam were flown into the secret U.S. airfields in Australia. The drugs were redistributed to "regional drug banks", thus providing a "reserve currency" for the Agency's global criminal activities.

In October 1973, during the Middle East War, President Nixon put U.S. forces on nuclear "Level Three" alert, through the base at North West Cape. Australia had become involved, without the knowledge of its government, in a war on the other side of the world. When Whitlam found out about this, he was furious and told Parliament that although the Australian government would honour agreements with America covering existing spy stations, "there will not be extensions or proliferations."

Whitlam's words were to have serious consequences for the fate of his government. A new American Ambassador was appointed to Australia - Marshall Green, widely known as "the coup-master". Green was a senior U.S. policy planner for Southeast Asia and had the distinction of being involved in several countries where the CIA had masterminded coups, such as Indonesia and Chile.

Green visited the office of Clyde Cameron, a senior minister in the Whitlam government, and made the threat that if the Labor Government honoured one of its key election pledges to reclaim national ownership of oil refineries and other industries which had been mostly sold to American transnational interests, "we would move in." In early 1974, Green addressed the Australian Institute of Directors with a speech that amounted almost to an incitement to rise against the Australian Government. Green went on to say that Australian business leaders "could expect help from the United States, which would be similar to the help given to South America." (The CIA-sponsored coup in Chile had happened only a few months earlier).

The CIA set about a programme of discrediting Jim Cairns, leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement. ASIO timed the leak of a defamatory "Cairns file" to the Bulletin magazine to coincide with Cairns' election to Deputy Prime Minister in 1974. This file claimed that Cairns "echoed Communist views... and his activities could lead to the fascist cult of the personality... and to the destruction of the democratic system of government." A few weeks later, ASIO leaked a second file to journalist Peter Samuels, a regular publisher of CIA propaganda. Under the headline The Pathway to Terrorism, Samuels wrote that ASIO's prime concern about Cairns was the "terrorist" potential of his part in the anti-war movement.

By the end of 1974, inflation and the money supply were rising at an alarming rate due to the dramatic rise in the cost of oil. Despite this, the Whitlam Government was determined to honour its election promise to hand control of U.S. multinational subsidiaries to the Australian people. In order to achieve this, Whitlam sent two of his ministers to scour the Middle East for a loan of $A4 billion.

In November 1974 Rex Connor, the Minister for Minerals and Energy, met with Tirath Khemlani, a Pakistani "commodities merchant" who was working for the London brokers Dalamal & Sons. Unknown to Connor, Khemlani was a con-man who had been sent to sabotage the Australian Government by a Hong Kong arms firm closely associated with Commerce International, a Brussels-based armaments company with widespread links to the CIA. (Commerce International was set up as a front for Task Force 157, the highly secretive CIA "dirty tricks" organisation).

In March 1975 Jim Cairns was introduced to Melbourne businessman George Harris, who told Cairns that a $A4 billion loan was available from Commerce International with a once-only brokerage fee of 2.5%. Cairns considered the offer a fairy tale and rejected the deal. Harris then contacted Phillip Lynch, Deputy Leader of the opposition Liberal Party. When Lynch raised the question of the brokerage fee in Parliament, Cairns denied that any such agreement existed. Within days, a letter with Cairns' signature was published on the front pages of the national newspapers and Cairns was forced to resign for "misleading Parliament." Cairns steadfastly maintained that he never agreed to or put his name to such an outrageous and incriminating letter. A top-secret CIA briefing document for the U.S. President dated July 3rd 1975 later revealed that Cairns had been sacked "even though the evidence had been fabricated."

The CIA was involved in further activities designed to undermine the Whitlam Government. In July 1975 the Australian media reported that the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company, based in the Bahamas, had issued a letter seeking $4,267,365,000 "for and on behalf of the Government of Australia." The bank did not claim to be acting with the approval of the Australian Government and cabinet ministers had never heard of it. But the implication was enough to fill the newspapers with another "scandal". Much later, an ASIO officer was to publicly state: "some of the documents which helped discredit the Labor Government in its last year in office were forgeries planted by the CIA."

Mercantile Bank and Trust was set up and owned by the CIA's Colonel Paul Helliwell, who built up a network of banks, including the infamous Castle Bank, which collapsed after U.S. tax investigators found it was laundering drugs money for the CIA and the Mafia (see the Wake Up article Dealing in Death: The CIA and the Drugs Trade). As the loans affair reached its climax in the spring of 1975, a welter of supposedly incriminating documents forged by the CIA were given widespread coverage in the Australian media. Tirath Khemlani himself arrived in Australia with two bags bulging with more "incriminating" documents. Bodyguards provided by the opposition parties accompanied Khemlani and the CIA paid his expenses. Khemlani made outrageous claims in the media that Labor ministers had received commissions and "kickbacks" from the loans, that documents proving corruption were soon to be made public, and so on.

In fact not one of these "documents" proved a thing; not one penny was paid by anyone to the government, nor did any minister profit from the affair. In 1981 a CIA contract employee, Joseph Flynn, revealed that he had forged some of the loans affair documents and had bugged a hotel room where Gough Whitlam was staying. He had been paid by Michael Hand, co-founder of the CIA's Nugan Hand Bank.

Former Nugan Hand principal Karl Schuller provided evidence to Australian Corporate Affairs investigating officers that the CIA transferred a "slush fund" of $A2,400,000 to the main opposition parties in March 1973, four months after Whitlam's election. An investigation by a special New South Wales police task force concluded that "many links were found between individuals connected with Nugan Hand and individuals connected in very significant ways with U.S. intelligence organisations, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of Naval Intelligence [Task Force 157]... at times those links have the appearance of the direct involvement of the U.S. intelligence community itself." The Commission called for criminal charges for "drug, conspiracy, perjury and passport offences." (A year after Frank Nugan's death, the Deputy Director of the CIA, Admiral Bobby Inman, expressed deep concern that the investigations into Nugan Hand Bank would lead to disclosure of a range of CIA dirty tricks calculated to undermine the Whitlam Government).

It was revealed in the press that the CIA had offered the Australian opposition Liberal Party (the Liberals were actually conservative) "unlimited funds" in their unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Labor party in the May 1974 parliamentary elections. Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti confirmed that the CIA had funded both of the major opposition parties and that the Liberals had been receiving CIA funds since the late 1960s.

According to the former Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA, Dr Ray Cline, the CIA passed information to opposition politicians not only to discredit the Whitlam Government but also to put pressure on Australian civil servants who in turn would pressure the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.

When the Pine Gap Treaty, which would determine the future of the CIA's most valuable overseas base, was due for renewal on December 9th 1975, Whitlam's comments that he might not renew the treaty raised major alarms in the Agency. CIA Director William Colby later wrote that the "threat" posed by the Whitlam Government was one of the three "world crises" of his career, comparable with the Middle East war two years previously, when the United States considered using nuclear weapons.

The CIA Station Chief in London, Dr John Proctor, contacted MI6 and asked for British help with "the Whitlam problem." William Colby directly approached his opposite number, head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, to emphasise to British intelligence that Australia was "traditionally Britain's domain" and that if Pine Gap was closed down, "the Alliance would be blinded strategically." The CIA also sought assistance from MI6 and MI5 liaison officers based in Washington.

British intelligence has long had a vested interest in Australian politics. MI6 operates its own base at Kowandi, south of Darwin, where its highly secret activities are concealed from the Australian government and people. They include widespread interception of communications and covert operations in Asia. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS, also operates from this base and is highly integrated with British intelligence.

At the same time as U.S. intelligence was targeting the Australian Labor Government, Peter Wright (of Spycatcher infamy) and his colleagues in British intelligence were busy destabilising the British Labour Government of Harold Wilson. Wright conspired with his close friend, James Jesus Angleton, the extreme right-wing head of CIA counter-intelligence, to "target" the three Western leaders they regarded as "Communist agents": Harold Wilson, Willy Brandt in Germany and Gough Whitlam.

After discovering that the British and American intelligence services based in Australia were secretly involved in Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, Whitlam ordered the dismissal of the heads of ASIO and ASIS in the autumn of 1975, and then began to make moves against the CIA. Then, at the beginning of November, it was revealed in the press that a former CIA officer, Richard Stallings, had been channelling funds to J. Douglas Anthony, leader of the opposition National Country Party, and was a close friend and former tenant of Anthony's Canberra home. Whitlam accused the opposition of being "subsidised by the CIA."

In Parliament, Doug Anthony admitted that Stallings was a friend but challenged Whitlam to provide evidence that Stallings worked for the CIA. (Stallings' name was not on the official list of "declared" CIA officers working in Australia, but on a "confidential" list held by the Permanent Head of the Australian Defence Department, Sir Arthur Tange). Whitlam prepared a reply, which he intended to give when Parliament resumed the following week, on Tuesday November 11th.

The CIA was frantic. The Australian Prime Minister was about to blow the cover of the agent who had set up Pine Gap and to reveal that the supposedly "joint" facility was a CIA charade. Furthermore, the future of the base itself was to be subject to parliamentary debate. The day before his speech was due, Whitlam was informed of a telex from the ASIO station in Washington, which stated that the Prime Minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The message had been virtually dictated by Theodore Shackley, head of the CIA's East Asia Division (and whose plethora of illegal covert activities have been outlined in other articles on this site).

On Sunday November 9th, the Australian Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, was briefed on the "security crisis", while the head of the Defence Department declared publicly: "This is the greatest risk to the nation's security there has ever been." The CIA was certain that Whitlam would announce the cancellation of the Pine Gap agreement on December 9th, and set into motion a plan to install in power a political party to "protect the sanctity of U.S. bases."

Six weeks earlier, during a visit to Indonesia, opposition politician Andrew Peacock had briefed government officials there on the current state of the Australian political crisis. He described in detail a sequence of events that were about to take Australia by surprise. A record of his briefing was later read into Australian Hansard:

"Whitlam will not agree to hold an election.... The Governor-General would be forced to ask Malcolm Fraser to form a Cabinet. But this Cabinet would not be able to get a mandate to govern, because Parliament is controlled by the Labor Party.... Fraser is appointed PM, a minute later he asks the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament, following which a general election is to be held."

And that was exactly what happened. On November 11th, the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament fully about the CIA and American bases in Australia, he was summoned by Kerr from Parliament House. Without warning, Kerr dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister, dissolved both houses of Parliament and appointed Malcolm Fraser, leader of the Liberal Party, to head an interim government until new elections could be held in December. An unelected official (whose position was traditionally only that of a figurehead representative of the Queen of England) had, in one arbitrary and unconstitutional act, overthrown a legitimate and democratically elected government.

Back in the House of Representatives, Whitlam called for a vote of confidence in himself and his government. An overwhelming majority supported Whitlam. Indeed, six motions proposed that day, including a motion of no-confidence in Malcolm Fraser, were passed by absolute majorities. The Speaker of the House delivered Parliament's clear message of confidence in the Whitlam government personally to the Governor-General. Kerr refused to accept it. The no-confidence motion against Fraser legally obliged the Governor-General to dismiss Fraser, but Kerr chose to ignore this.

Former CIA officers who were among the Agency's "top seven" in 1975, revealed ten years later that "Whitlam was set up. The action that Kerr took was so extreme that it would take far more than a constitutional crisis to cause him to do what he did...." A Deputy Director of the CIA said, "Kerr did what he was told to do."

During the first week of the coup, the Australian army was recalled to barracks and there were reports that units were issued with live ammunition. There were demonstrations against the sacking of the Labor Government throughout Australia; the unions began to mobilise and prepare for a general strike. However, Bob Hawke, the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), summoned the press and delivered a stirring speech in which he said that "working people must not be provoked... we have to show we are not going to allow this to snowball." Hawke's intervention was critical: Australia's organised labour was strangely quiet in response to the affair. In fact Marshall Green later said that he found Bob Hawke so amenable to the CIA's cause that "Bob gave me his private telephone number and said if anything ever comes up that desperately needs some action, this is the number to ring."

An election was called for December 13th 1975. During the campaign, three letter bombs were posted to Kerr, Fraser and the ultra-right-wing Queensland Premier, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. Most of the press, led by Rupert Murdoch's papers, concluded that the bombs were sent by left-wing extremists within the Labor Party. There was not a shred of evidence to support this and no culprits were ever found, but the charge of "terrorism" was used to great effect against Labor.

Four days before the election, Bjelke-Petersen called a special session of the Queensland Parliament to hear "dramatic revelations". He claimed to be "in possession of material which made clear that two Ministers of the Whitlam Government were due to receive staggering sums of money as a consequence of secret commissions and kickbacks." Bjelke-Petersen then moved quickly to gag any debate and to prevent the Labor leader from arranging for parliamentary investigation of the "revelations". The undisclosed "revelations" made large headlines in the press. No material or evidence of any kind was ever produced, but the publicity achieved its goal. Whitlam lost the election.

The new Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser renewed the Pine Gap treaty for another decade. He also offered Washington a naval base at Cockburn Sound, even though the Americans had not requested it. In his first budget, Fraser increased the size of ASIO and gave it more money, proportionately, than any other government body. Kerr was given an unequalled pay rise of 170% and was promoted to "Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George."

Despite denying that he ever had any connections with the CIA or any other intelligence organisations, Kerr in fact had a long association with covert intelligence operations, firstly as a member of the top-secret Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs during the Second World War. He was then seconded to the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, the fore-runner of the CIA. Although he joined the Australian Labor Party early in his career, Kerr was always well to the right politically. He was chief legal adviser to the Industrial Groups, a body which sought to dominate trade unionism and was linked to the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), an extreme "anti-Communist" organisation whose split from the Labor Party and subsequent spoiler tactics kept Labor in opposition until the election of Gough Whitlam in 1977. Kerr was an active member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, which was exposed in Congress in 1967 as being "founded, funded and generally run by the CIA." In the 1960s Kerr travelled to the United States to arrange funding from the Asia Foundation; that too, was exposed in Congress as a CIA conduit for money and influence.

The trade union movement of Australia had long been infiltrated by U.S. intelligence. As John Grenville, assistant secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall, revealed, "it was generally accepted that the U.S. labour attaché was the station agent for the CIA." Robert Walkinshaw was the labour attaché from 1962 to 1964. During his time in Melbourne, a trade-union publication, Spotlight, was set up, funded and run by the CIA. Walkinshaw's subsequent CIA posting was Indonesia, during the military coup in which over half a million alleged Communists were murdered. Walkinshaw was later posted as CIA adviser in Phuoc Tuy, Vietnam, where the Australian army and Australian CIA advisers were based.

The CIA later admitted giving money to the General Secretary of the powerful Australian Worker's Union, Tom Dougherty, to "fight Communism in the AWU." Four years later the National Secretary of the Federation Ironworkers' Association, Laurie Short, began many visits to the United States, which were sponsored by the CIA. Short returned to Australia "determined to get rid of the Commies and their friends" from the Labor Party and the unions. He also delivered the clear message that "in America, the trade-union movement looked to Australian unionists to help counteract the spread of Communism in the Far East."

The three Americans involved in supporting Bob Hawke's campaign for the Presidency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) - Emil Lindahl, Gerry O'Keefe and Ed McHale - all worked for the CIA. Gerry O'Keefe was exposed as a major CIA operator in right-wing Chilean unions that helped to overthrow the Allende Government. Ed McHale was U.S. labour attaché in the early 1970s and maintained a "close personal relationship" with Hawke when the ACTU President was one of the most powerful union bosses Australia had ever known. McHale was internationally known as a senior CIA officer, having long been Assistant Director of Radio Free Europe, which had been set up, financed and run by the CIA.

In 1977 the American Christopher Boyce disclosed details of CIA activities in Australia, specifically the manipulation of unions. Boyce was employed by a Californian aerospace company, TRW Systems Inc., in a cryptographic communications centre which linked CIA headquarters in Virginia with the Agency's satellite surveillance system in Australia. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated Australian labour unions, had manipulated their leadership and suppressed strikes, particularly those involving railroads and airports. Boyce described one instance when TRW had material and personnel to ship out to the CIA spy base at Pine Gap. The Agency was concerned that strikes at Australian airports could wreck their schedule. However, a telex from CIA headquarters said, "CIA will continue to suppress the strikes. Continue shipment on schedule." In other words, the CIA had infiltrated the hierarchy of Australian trade unions.

Boyce and his associate Andrew Daulton Lee were put on trial in 1977 for selling U.S. secrets to the Russians. Lee had flown to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico and sold details of the CIA's covert activities in Australia to the Soviets. Boyce maintained that he had never intended the information to go the Russians, that Lee had agreed to make it public through one of his father's influential friends, but that he had been blackmailed by Lee, a heroin addict and pusher.

Evidence emerged during the trial that most of TRW's communications came from Pine Gap and that although the United States had signed an Executive Agreement with Australia to share information from Pine Gap, the agreement was not being honoured and "certain information" was regularly concealed from the Australian government. Boyce described the CIA's campaigns to subvert Australian trade unions "particularly in the transport industry", and revealed that the Agency was using Pine Gap to eavesdrop on telephone and telex messages to and from Australia of a political character, and that the CIA had funded the Australian opposition political parties. Boyce also revealed that the Australian Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, was referred to by Joe Harrison, the CIA chief at TWR, as "our man Kerr."

Boyce's disclosures caused a sensation in the United States. The prosecuting lawyers made no attempt to refute his allegations but successfully objected to any further evidence about the CIA's activities in Australia. The judge complied with a direct CIA request and agreed that Boyce would not mention the "Australia information" at his trial if, in return, the government did not use it against him - such was the sensitivity of the matter. Boyce and Lee were both found guilty; Lee was given a life sentence, while Boyce was sent for "psychiatric observation" - an indication that he might be treated leniently in return for his silence. However, Boyce made it consistently clear that he was so outraged at the betrayal of an ally - Australia - that he intended to talk. He was subsequently given forty years in Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois, where he is kept in solitary confinement. Whenever he leaves his cell, he is manacled, handcuffed and accompanied by two guards. It is said that his only hope of release rests on his continued silence about what happened in Australia.

The American Christopher Boyce described CIA covert operations in Australia aimed at bringing down the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam. Boyce was sentenced to 40 years solitary confinement for his refusal to stay silent on the matter.

Five years after the overthrow of Whitlam, in April 1981, senior executives of nineteen Australian corporations met at Melbourne's Noah's Hotel for a "forecasting round table" organised by Business International. Business International is a worldwide American organisation of "consultants" which represents the top multi-national companies in Australia. In December 1977, the New York Times exposed Business International's clandestine links with the CIA.

The nineteen had come to hear Business International's Alan Carroll express his concern about the resurgence of the Labor Party under Bill Hayden, who had held senior posts in the Whitlam Government and described himself as a republican and a democratic socialist. At that time, Bob Hawke had completed his term as ACTU President and was a newly elected Labor Party Member of Parliament. Carroll told the meeting that he knew Hawke "pretty well" and "basically, Hawke will be Labor Party leader by the middle of next year; and that's my business, and we won't go into that in any great depth. But he will be there. It's all under way. The game plan is totally under way and I forecast 3 to 5 on a Hawke Government in '83! We had a meeting with him about one month ago and we're meeting with him every six months from now. It's terribly important." A top-secret CIA briefing document for the U.S. President described Hawke as "the best qualified" to succeed Whitlam as Labor leader.

The forecasts of the Agency and Alan Carroll came true in almost every detail. In February 1983, three weeks before an election was due, Hawke and others on the party's right wing mounted a successful putsch against Bill Hayden. With the slogan, "Bob Hawke, Bringing Australia Together", the CIA's chosen candidate became Australian Prime Minister. Hawke went on to cultivate many ties with anti-Communist groups and developed what U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz described as "a fine relationship" with Presidents Nixon and Reagan.

Hawke's Government repeatedly refused to release some 1,200 documents on the Nugan Hand Bank, the front for international crime and illegal CIA operations in Australia. Hawke also refused to find out why the CIA barred the release, under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, of fourteen intelligence reports on Commerce International, the CIA-front company that played a central role in the destruction of the Whitlam Government. In 1989 a committee headed by a former Chief Justice of the High Court recommended rigorous Government secrecy in order to prevent disclosures about the activities of the CIA, MI5 and MI6 in the internal affairs of Australia.

The CIA's illicit actions against the Australian Labor Party clearly indicate that the Agency will not hesitate to move against even supposed allies if it considers that they threaten U.S. interests; the full range of CIA dirty tricks can be expected to be applied against any Western nation with the same lack of impunity and regard for the law that the Agency has shown in its wars with its enemies in the East.

Friday, August 3, 2012

(Google English translation here - note that President Correa has been in a long-running battle with Ecuador's right-wing media, whom he calls "information mafias").

Palleres picks up on a fairly innocent comment from Christine Assange's recent RT.cominterview:

"The Foreign Minister invited me to tell him what I knew".

According to Pallares, this is a "revelation" proving that Mrs Assange came to Ecuador at the Foreign Minister's invitation, which "dispels any doubt about the real motivations of the Assange case."

"Since she arrived," says Pallares, "the presence of Christine Assange in Ecuador has been completely in tune with the communication strategy of the government, which does everything it can to erase any possible doubt about the abuses of media outside the official propaganda machine."

He claims the government of President Rafael Correa is exploiting Assange's decision to seek asylum as a way to bolster their image as beacons of press freedom.

"Mrs Assange has gone from one news bulletin to another, hand in hand with the Foreign Ministry's staff, to repeat as many times as possible that her son is trying to save his life by not allowing himself to be arrested by the great hegemonic power, the United States."

I am sure Christine Assange would be surprised to hear that she is being used as a tool of government propaganda. And I'm sure the translators and security staff who accompany her will be surprised to know that putting words in her mouth is part of their job descriptions.

Pallares closes his column by lamenting that "the granting of political asylum is subordinate to media strategy and government propaganda".

A glance at his profile reveals that Martin Pallares, El Commercio's current Online News Editor, previously spent five years as Political Editor. His regular columns present an endless torrent of criticism aimed at the government, which he claims is using WikiLeaks as a "battle-horse in its obsessive war against the non-state press." Oh, and he's a Knight Fellow from Stanford University, USA.

It seems to me that Pallares is the one putting his own "propaganda", and El Comercio's "media strategy", ahead of Julian Assange's very serious request for political asylum. And I get the impression that President Correa's clamp-down on the media cannot be too extreme, if people like Martin Pallares are still free to publish.

r

evelation made by the
mother of controversial founder of Wikileaks came at the invitation of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador dispels any doubt that may
have occurred that are the real motivations behind the case Assange.

revelation made by the
mother of controversial founder of Wikileaks came at the invitation of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador dispels any doubt that may
have occurred that are the real motivations behind the case Assange.

revelation made by the
mother of controversial founder of Wikileaks came at the invitation of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador dispels any doubt that may
have occurred that are the real motivations behind the case Assange.

revelation made by the
mother of controversial founder of Wikileaks came at the invitation of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador dispels any doubt that may
have occurred that are the real motivations behind the case Assange.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

"Please feel at home," said President Correa to Mrs Assange. "Rest assured that Ecuador is studying the case of Julian Assange very seriously. This country does not negotiate it's sovereignty."

"If WikiLeaks had revealed things about Ecuador that benefit the major powers," he said, "Julian Assange would have been declared a hero."

"Don't worry, we will know how to make a decision with absolute independence and sovereignty," said the President, who was previously interviewed by Assange on his TV show, The World Tomorrow.

"Thanks to God we do not have anything to hide. We are the same in public and in private. They can publish what they want. We governments who have nothing to hide help publish whatever may come. We support true freedom of expression."

President Correa said the book Wiki Media Leaks had helped his government "decipher what the Ecuadorian press had hidden".

The President then invited Mrs Assange out onto the palace balcony, to witness popular support.

"You are a very good dictator," joked Mrs Assange, referring to Western media and opposition criticism of Correa's government. "I've walked through the streets and I see people smiling and happy."

Christine Assange thanked the government of Ecuador for their hospitality, noting that the small South American nation respected human rights and gave her a sense of freedom she didn't feel in other countries.

Afterwards, Christine Assange tweeted that President Correa was "kind, warm, intelligent, informed, humorous, strong, and high spirited. I see why the people love him."

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino lamented Sweden's decision not to interview Julian Assange in Ecuador's London embassy. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson also noted that the WikiLeaks EIC had never received an adequate explanation from Sweden as to why they haven't questioned him in the UK.

And Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who is travelling to Ecuador to meet Mrs Assange, has criticized the lengthy, secretive US Grand Jury process.

"A democratic country can't operate with its back to a person who is suspected of very serious crimes that could deprive him of liberty for a long time," Garzon told reporters. "The United States should make it known what it is doing, so that Mr. Assange can stand up for his rights."

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